At Ease

We’ve watched Comer come of age on screen: her first television role aired in 2008, when she was just a week shy of 15 years old. But it was a chance encounter with another gifted Scouser a few years later that proved pivotal. When actor Stephen Graham shot a scene with her for BBC drama Good Cop, he was so impressed that he called his agent, Jane Epstein, and suggested she represent Comer too. Small parts in more British dramas followed, before her turn as Killing Eve’s sartorially astute assassin Villanelle catapulted her to global fame. At just 33, she already has two Baftas, an Emmy, an Olivier and a Tony award.

The latter two were for her extraordinary performance in the one-woman show Prima Facie, which opened in April 2022 at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, before being transferred to Broadway in the spring of 2023. In it, she plays Tessa, a barrister who defends men from sexual-assault claims, before she herself is assaulted. The staging was an astonishing feat of endurance: for 90 minutes, Comer used every muscle to embody all the different characters, rearranged tables and chairs during scene changes, and threw herself from stage left to right and back again. An exhausting undertaking, even without acknowledging the intensely emotional subject matter.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that, when offered one final run of the show across the UK and Ireland, Comer said yes immediately. Surely a show like the one I’ve just described must take its toll – not merely physically, but emotionally? Comer takes a sip of her ginger beer (which the barman, a little starstruck, offers on the house) and considers her answer. The difference this time, she tells me, was working with a drama therapist named Wabriya King. She was reluctant at first: “I’ve always felt like I’m a very instinctual actor. I felt like, well, this has worked so far, and I don’t want anything to change that.” And then she relented. King would observe rehearsals, remind Comer to take breaks and provide emotional support where needed. The insight and advocacy, Comer says, was invaluable. “It meant that this time I was able to take care of myself and not lose my tether.”

In the past, Comer has been open about experiencing imposter syndrome. She credits the play, and the character of Tessa, with changing that. “I proved a lot to myself in that process. Now, when I show up to do my job, I feel sure, which is such a nice feeling. There’s a lot of classic material that I don’t know, and there are a lot of techniques that I’m unaware of, but ultimately, I feel like I’m where I need to be.”

Comer’s next role will be in A24’s The Death of Robin Hood, as Sister Brigid opposite Hugh Jackman’s antihero. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, the mind behind Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, his Robin Hood bears little resemblance to the standard swashbuckler of folklore and Hollywood. Jackman’s Robin is brutal and mercilessly violent, aging and seemingly emotionally hollow. Injured, he arrives on a holy island under the care of Comer’s character and faces his own moral reckoning. Over the course of the film, we meet many of his victims, either seeing firsthand or hearing in painstaking detail the pain Robin has inflicted on them. “It subverts any kind of expectation,” Comer explains.

The Death of Robin Hood was shot over eight weeks in Northern Ireland, with what Comer describes as a “very harmonious energy”, something she credits to Sarnoski (“the energy of a director, or whoever is leading the company, always trickles through”), along with the number of Pisces on set – “I think there were, like, eight of us!” Comer’s performance is artfully restrained, her depiction of Sister Brigid’s stillness and grace is painstakingly precise. Shot on 35mm, the film is visually stunning too. “I think it’s the most beautiful piece of work I’ve ever been a part of, in a sense. That first 20 minutes… You don’t come up for air.”

Despite how much she’d wanted it, when it came to filming, Comer was “the most scared [she’d] ever been. For every minute I wasted saying that I want to do a musical,” she laughs, “I probably could have done a year’s worth of professional vocal training.” And now that she’s finally done it, what’s next? “I’d love to do an animation,” she giggles, “I’ve been begging my agents to get me a role in Shrek, like begging. Maybe this will be like the musical: in 10 years’ time, I’ll get to do it!”

I remind Comer – thankfully to her amusement – that when she met her agent, at the meeting set up by Stephen Graham when she was 17, she supposedly said, “I want a career like Keira Knightley.” I ask her which actor, or whose career, she would pick now. She hesitates before answering. “I actually feel very content with my own. I feel reluctant to say that out loud. Perhaps out of fear of appearing grandiose, but I’m very proud of my own journey.”

After years of investing herself intensely in parts, it’s clear that shifting the focus inwards has had a profound effect. Despite how I – and, indeed, the rest of the world – may feel, I won’t pretend to know Comer well. I have, however, had the pleasure of meeting her once before today and it seems to me that there’s a difference in her. Comer has always been captivating and charismatic, but here is a woman clearly at ease in herself. For an actor famed for her powers of transformation, this could be her most exciting feat to date. We might not know her – not really – but she’s firmly on the path to knowing herself.

The Death of Robin Hood is in cinemas from June 19

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